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Former Player’s Suicide Won’t End His Widow’s Fight

Mary Ann Easterling, 59, the widow of the former N.F.L. player Ray Easterling.Credit
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

RICHMOND, Va. — For Mary Ann Easterling, the prudent and less painful options, it might seem, are to move away and move on.

Relocate from the home where she found the body of her husband, Ray, a handgun nearby, and the neighborhood where Ray, a former N.F.L. safety, would become disoriented on long-distance jogs, sometimes prompting one-woman search parties at 2 a.m.

Withdraw his name from the class-action lawsuit that accuses the league of improperly caring for retired players with head injuries, a consequence that she contends turned Ray’s last two decades into a living, foggy hell.

Nine days after Ray’s death at 62, ruled a suicide by the police, his widow sat in the living room, recounting their ordeal for two and a half hours in a voice that was never choked by tears and occasionally rose an octave when reflecting mild indignation. This was four days before the former N.F.L. star Junior Seau died Wednesday in California, a gunshot to the chest that the police ruled a suicide, reviving concerns about the possible long-term toll the sport has on its participants.

To Mary Ann’s left, a floral arrangement brightened the fireplace. On a table within her reach was a stack of documents that detailed Ray’s relevant injuries and what she and her husband believed was a lack of sufficient attention to them. The documents had been transcribed from his writing, or at least what she could decipher. His hands would shake, reducing his penmanship to barely legible scribbling.

They met 37 years ago at a Thursday night Bible study co-hosted by Ray in someone’s basement — she a college senior majoring in music, he a “handsome, gregarious pro football player” with the Atlanta Falcons. Twelve whirlwind months later, bonding around their spirituality, they were wed despite this admonition from her choral director about commitment to an athlete: “Do you know what you are getting into?”

Photo

Ray Easterling as an Atlanta Falcons safety in 1975.Credit
AP

Life as an athlete’s spouse turned out to be rather conventional, for the most part, filled by Bible study sessions with Ray’s teammates and their wives, and free of extravagances. (His salary topped out at $75,000.)

Eventually, the choral director’s warning began to resonate, though not as intended. Ray would arrive home woozy, complaining of brutal practices, equating games with combat. Retirement came reluctantly in 1979: he told her, after eight solid but unspectacular seasons, that the body was unwilling to play more football, even if the mind was.

No adverse aftereffects surfaced through the 1980s. Ray’s engaging personality, discipline and diligence proved a good formula in the financial services field. What followed was a downward spiral during which he flipped to being argumentative and forgetful, as if a personality transplant were mixed in with the two dozen orthopedic operations he endured.

Business ventures slid off the rails when Ray, for whom punctuality was a practiced virtue, appeared tardy for appointments.

In many settings, he would blurt out offensive remarks, the filter in his brain no longer functioning at full tilt. Realizing this, he became disengaged, even from his mother, who died a month before he did. At family events, he would show up in running shorts when more formal attire was appropriate.

Staring into space wistfully, Mary Ann said, “I didn’t feel like I was with the person that I married.”

The symptoms went unconnected to football by her and his doctors until late 2010. She was pinballing around the Internet. A report on a suicide led to the case studies of afflicted ex-players.

It was an a-ha moment. “Like reading my life story for the past 20 years,” she said.

In three months, there came a diagnosis: dementia. Hallelujah, thought Mary Ann, even if the news was tantamount to a death sentence. Mystery solved.

Ray’s decline continued unabated, with Mary Ann’s fear for his well-being increasing proportionally. The suicide of Dave Duerson last year hit close to home. Like Ray, Duerson played safety, and with a daredevil style.

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The Easterlings' wedding photo from 1976.Credit
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Ray had told Mary Ann that entering an institution for long-term care was unacceptable. Frustration over such fundamental activities as walking from one room to another, then not remembering why, was building.

Still, Ray would set out on his runs, and not just neighborhood jogs, amid which he would often stumble and fall. Five days before the end, Mary Ann accompanied him to a track, where he knocked out sprints of 220 and 150 yards, asking in between if he was pumping his arms correctly.

He had also taken to chopping up fallen trees in the area and collecting the logs. An accident took off part of his thumb.

On the morning of April 19, along with her husband’s lifeless body, Mary Ann discovered a note, written with his increasingly numb and quivering hands.

It was addressed to her, sprinkled with “I love yous” and containing evidence that his faith had not wavered. Quoting from the letter, she said, “I’m ready to meet my Lord and savior.”

She acknowledged a sense of relief, and not just for herself after 20 years of exhaustive caregiving, although she never considered handing it off.

In her mind’s eye, she can see Ray in heaven, suffering no more, his brain functioning normally.

For now, Mary Ann intends to keep intact the self-described man cave, a two-room basement where Ray maintained an office and stored mementos.

Hanging from the walls are photos, mostly black-and-white, of him lunging into a ball carrier, often headfirst. There are annual team portraits, a few Ray Easterling football cards, his framed No. 32 jersey, a lightly padded helmet that was standard in his day and game balls, one of them ominously inscribed with the words, “Paid the Price.”

One more remembrance sits outside, near the garage at the top of the driveway: stacks of logs, covered by a clear tarp, cut by Ray’s trembling hands.

He had assured his wife that there would be enough wood to warm their house through the next few winters.